The Dark Star

In vain he bribed the guard, who offered to do his best; but the human

contents of a Channel passenger steamer had unwillingly spent the

night in the quaint French port, and the Paris-bound train was already

full.

The best Neeland could do was to find a seat in a compartment where he

interrupted conversation between three men who turned sullen heads to

look at him, resenting in silence the intrusion. One of them was the

fox-faced man he had already noticed on the packet, tender, and

customs dock.

But Neeland, whose sojourn in a raw and mannerless metropolis had not

blotted out all memory of gentler cosmopolitan conventions, lifted his

hat and smilingly excused his intrusion in the fluent and agreeable

French of student days, before he noticed that he had to do with men

of his own race.

None of the men returned his salute; one of them merely emitted an

irritated grunt; and Neeland recognised that they all must be his own

delightful country-men--for even the British are more dignified in

their stolidity.

A second glance satisfied him that all three were undoubtedly

Americans; the cut of their straw hats and apparel distinguished them

as such; the nameless grace of Mart, Haffner and Sharx marked the

tailoring of the three; only Honest Werner could have manufactured

such headgear; only New York such footwear.

And Neeland looked at them once more and understood that Broadway

itself sat there in front of him, pasty, close-shaven, furtive,

sullen-eyed, the New York Paris Herald in its seal-ringed fingers;

its fancy waistcoat pockets bulging with cigars.

"Sports," he thought to himself; and decided to maintain incognito and

pass as a Frenchman, if necessary, to escape conversation with the

three tired-eyed ones.

So he hung up his hat, opened his novel, and settled back to endure

the trip through the rain, now beginning to fall from a low-sagging

cloud of watery grey.

After a few minutes the train moved. Later the guard passed and

accomplished his duties. Neeland inquired politely of him in French

whether there was any political news, and the guard replied politely

that he knew of none. But he looked very serious when he said it.

Half an hour from the coast the rain dwindled to a rainbow and ceased;

and presently a hot sun was gilding wet green fields and hedges and

glistening roofs which steamed vapour from every wet tile.

Without asking anybody's opinion, one of the men opposite raised the

window. But Neeland did not object; the rain-washed air was

deliciously fragrant; and he leaned his elbow on his chair arm and

looked out across the loveliest land in Europe.

"Say, friend," said an East Side voice at his elbow, "does smoking

go?"

He glanced back over his shoulder at the speaker--a little, pallid,

sour-faced man with the features of a sick circus clown and eyes like

two holes burnt in a lump of dough.